NICK VARVARIS:
Well firstly I’d like to thank the Prime Minister for taking the time out of his busy schedule to come and visit the seat of Barton and in particular this business, Frutex.
It’s a small to medium business that has grown over the last 30 years from employing barely no one to approximately about 140 people and it’s this type of business that we need to be supporting to ensure that we take any constraints off them like the carbon tax so they’re free to flourish and prosper and to create more employment opportunities in the local area.
I’m glad to be part of a Government that’s looking at doing that and I support the Prime Minister and the Coalition Government in achieving that outcome.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you so much Nick.
It is great to be in the electorate of Barton. We’ve got a very dynamic local member with a long record of service to the community and it’s vital – absolutely vital – in the weeks and months and years ahead that we acknowledge, recognise and support the vital small businesses which are going to be so much a part of employment and prosperity in our country in the years and decades ahead.
Frutex is a great Australian success story. An immigrant family started their own business and from next to nothing - now employing about 140 people, exporting to dozens of countries in Asia and largely using local products.
What you saw downstairs was some relatively sophisticated manufacturing processes. This is an important part of manufacturing in Australia – our food processing industry – and it’s vital that we get tax down and get regulation down if we are to get prosperity up and employment up and that’s what this Government is all about.
We are all about getting taxes down and regulation and red-tape down so that we can get employment and prosperity up.
Our campaign against the carbon tax is all about creating more jobs – more jobs for Australian workers, more prosperity for Australian people and I say to the Labor Party: if you’re serious about looking after workers, if you’re serious about trying to boost employment in this country - stop supporting this carbon tax. No one wants it; the people don’t want it. The only Australians who still support the carbon tax are The Greens. Mr Shorten and his Party ought to be on the side of the Australian people, not on the side of The Greens.
It’s great to be here with Nick Varvaris. I think Nick can have a long and successful career as the Member for Barton because he is a man of this community, for this community, with this community.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, can you give us an update on the Malaysia situation and where Australia is involved?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes. Yesterday afternoon I spoke with Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia to express the Australian peoples’ sympathies and condolences. I also suggested to the Prime Minister that we were in a position to assist with the search and recovery effort. Shortly after that conversation we began the process of dispatching two Orion maritime surveillance aircraft to the search and recovery area. The first aircraft left at about 8:30 last night, the second aircraft left this morning and by this afternoon both of those aircraft will be working in the search area.
This is a terrible tragedy. There are lots and lots of questions that people have. At the moment we don’t have answers, but it’s important that we are out there looking and that is a search which is now being materially assisted by the Royal Australian Air Force.
QUESTION:
Are you concerned about talks of terrorism being involved?
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m not going to speculate because we just don’t know.
QUESTION:
What about these two men though travelling on stolen passports – are you concerned about that?
PRIME MINISTER:
I understand that it’s not uncommon for passports to be stolen in certain countries. I’m just not going to speculate on what the significance of that might be.
QUESTION:
PM, given that you’re going to Asia next month, is regional security now going to be back up on the agenda as well as trade issues?
PRIME MINISTER:
There’s a sense in which regional security is always on the agenda and the Australian government – regardless of whether it’s Coalition or Labor – is always concerned to build better relations with our friends and neighbours and I am always looking for opportunities where Australia can be a good neighbour to the countries in our region. I guess the way we’ve sent very capable aircraft to assist the Malaysians with the search and recovery effort is another sign of the kind of good neighbour that Australia always aspires to be.
But in the end, this is a trade mission more than anything else. I’ll be visiting our three largest single trading partners in this order: Japan, Korea and then China. I am confident that the delegation that I lead to China will be one of the largest delegations ever to leave our shores and it’s a sign of the importance that we attach to our region and the importance that we attach to our close friendships.
QUESTION:
Is there any more help that Australia can give the Malaysians in this investigation other than the Orions?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, we are certainly keen to be as helpful as we can. It was pretty obvious to me that the best thing we could do at this stage was to assist with the search and recovery effort and the obvious capability that we could deploy in that context were the P-3 Orion aircraft.
Now, as we find out more about this terrible incident there may be other capacities which Australia can deploy, but at the moment we’re in the search and recovery phase and we’re doing, for the Malaysians, what we can do best in this particular part of the operation.
QUESTION:
Are our counter-terrorism agencies looking into it?
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m just not going to feed speculation. I am really not going to feed speculation. People should not jump to conclusions. We just don’t have answers to these questions. They’re the sorts of questions which, obviously, people are entitled to ask, but I shouldn’t try to answer them until we have more information on which to base our answers.
QUESTION:
On that note Prime Minister, there are Australians travelling to and from Malaysia all the time and in this region. What would you say to those people who are travelling? Should they be scared of something like this happening?
PRIME MINISTER:
Australians are not a timid people – never have been, never will be – and the last thing I would want to do is to discourage travel. I think it’s very important that Australians travel where they need to travel. Tourism is important, trade is even more important and I would encourage Australians who have business in our region, whether it’s for pleasure or for work, I would encourage people to just go about their ordinary business at this time.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, does Customs check databases for stolen passports?
PRIME MINISTER:
I’m just not going to go into speculative detail here. Obviously, every country has a range of security measures in place for people coming and going. We certainly have a range of security measures in place for people who are coming or going. None of them are foolproof unfortunately, but the fact is all of them are as effective as we can make them.
QUESTION:
Can we expect travel warnings for Australians to change in that area?
PRIME MINISTER:
I really don’t want to encourage a climate of fear and apprehension here. Air travel is inherently safe. Very occasionally we have terrible accidents. Very occasionally we have disasters that have a more sinister cause, but I am just not going to feed any speculation about this. We just don’t know what’s happened and until we are able to locate some of the aircraft it is very difficult for us to say any more than that.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, can I ask you on another matter, will you publically release the Commission of Audit’s interim report before the state elections that are coming up this weekend and the WA Senate re-election?
PRIME MINISTER:
We are currently in the process of carefully considering the interim report of the Commission of Audit. That’s what you’d expect – that’s what you’d expect. A sensible, adult Government that has commissioned important work, carefully studied it so that an appropriate response can be formulated and at the right time the report is released and this is no different from any other important piece of work which has been commissioned by government. We certainly will be publically releasing it, but we will be publically releasing it at the right time.
QUESTION:
And do you think that’s unlikely to be then in the near future by the sounds of it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think it’s very important with something as comprehensive as this that when you release it you’re able to give a fairly comprehensive response and obviously we’re in the very early days of considering the Commission of Audit report. I imagine that in the not too distant future we may be able to say more about it, but these are early days.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, your Cabinet colleague over the weekend, Malcolm Turnbull, suggested that your Government may look at relaxing media ownership laws. Are you in agreement with him on that?
PRIME MINISTER:
We all know that the world of media has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. The media world of the 1990s is almost unrecognisable today. You’ve got television from all around the world that’s available online, here in Australia - radio from all around the world that’s available online, you’ve got newspapers that are effectively podcasting their product, you’ve got the ABC producing online services which amount to an online newspaper, so the media world has changed beyond recognition over the last couple of decades and it’s important that regulation evolve to match the changing environment.
Now we’re not rushing to change regulation. Even when we do seek to change regulation, it will be in a deregulatory direction because that’s the instinct of this Government. But we’re not interested in picking unnecessary fights, we’re not interested in taking sides between one commercial operator and the other, so we’ll be consulting with the community, we’ll be consulting with the sector. We hope that a consensus might emerge as to the way forward, but at the moment we are doing what sensible governments do; we are talking to people, assessing what they think the issues are so that we can then gauge the most intelligent way to respond.
Thank you.
[ends]